Anonymous asked: after a year, final opinions on Angles?

You can see my personal opinion on it here and here—it hasn’t changed since when I wrote those posts. I will add, however, that in listening to it a lot in the past day or so, I think the first three songs are especially brilliant. 

—Chelsea

Anonymous asked: hey i currently bought a strokes shirt from their own website last friday, but i haven't gotten it yet. do you know how long it usually takes for it to mail it? thanks!

We get a lot of questions regarding this—it seems like the store can be  a bit slow to ship things out, but that’s something to email them about to get a final answer.

Anonymous asked: what is the meaning of the covers of the 4 cd's of the strokes?

I don’t think that their album covers have intense “meanings” outside of them looking cool and trying to fit the “sound” of the music or something.

Is This It: Basically, they just thought the photo of the butt (by Colin Lane of his girlfriend after she took a shower) looked cool, I guess, but by the time of the US release, they liked the particle collisions better. 

Room On Fire

First Impressions Of Earth

Angles: A painting by Guy Pouppez, a Belgian artist

Anonymous asked: Why the band is called The Strokes

I love this question!

Why are you called the Strokes?

Julian: Because it means a lot of things that are artistic and strong. We all do interesting things in different ways and the words means interesting things in different ways. It just made so much sense that you can’t deny it.

Fab: We’d rejected a bunch of names. Nikolai said that made us laugh for days: ‘de Niros’ as in ‘the Niros’. I used to think of what the word actually meant: a stroke [holds his heart in an inaccurate medical mime], a stroke… blow to the face… a stroke in a painting. The one I think of the most is the brushstroke. But now I just of five dudes standing around.

Nikolai: There were so many different meanings to it, it could never pin us down. So many people have said ‘stroke of luck’, ‘stroke this’… there’s never one thing they can focus on. There’s when you have a stroke, cerebral congestion; there’s a stroke when you play guitar; then there’s the obvious sexual undertones.

Nick: When it first came up, it was like, ‘Oh, The Strokes, like a wank.’ Then a person said ‘No, it’s The Strokes like a heart attack’. Then another person said,’…like a caress’. It rolled off the tongue really well – sort of violent and sort of sexual and it just sounded cool to everybody.

Albert: We’d come in with all these bad names – the de Niros, the Rubber Bands, the Motels, Flattop Freddie and the Purple Canoes – and no one would agree. One day we’re in the studio after practice and Julian said ‘The Strokes’. And everyone was like ‘that sounds great!’. It was that easy; five guys agreeing. it doesn’t really mean anything. We thought it was a cool rock and roll name. When I first heard it, it sounded so old, like someone would have already taken it but no one did. Then I looked it up in the dictionary and ‘a powerful blow to the face, chest or body’ was the first thing. Perfect. That’s exactly what our music is. It’s like a powerful blow to the face.

SOURCE

—Chelsea

Anonymous asked: sorry to bother you ... but would someone please give me the link of that interview you posted here some time, Julian's in a bad mood (or something) and don't want to talk, and Nick is trying to make him laugh. Thank you for your attention (sorry for horrible english)

Here :)

Anonymous asked: Do you guys think The Strokes are going to have a bitter ending?

CHELSEA: If you’re referring to what I said here, it’s just an expression :). But I’m not sure what I think about their future because no one but the band and the people they work with have an idea of what really went on between them all in the first place. I certainly think just from observation and trying to read in between the lines of magazine articles that there was something more between them than just getting older and maturing, but it also seems like at least most of that is behind them now. I believe them when they say they all care about the band and each other, very much. But at the same time, most bands don’t just continue on and on forever, and I don’t see The Strokes being in it for the long haul like U2 or The Rolling Stones or something. I don’t see them having some major falling out where they all quit and sue each other like The Beatles or anything. I’m not even sure if I ever see them doing something like The White Stripes or LCD Soundsystem or REM did this year, with a formal letter on the website saying they’re done; I almost feel like it would be more likely that they’d just do another infinite hiatus and fizzle out of existence as a whole, de facto breaking up. They’ve all said at various times this year that they don’t want to break up the band, but if they do in fact still have unburied arguments and things that they can’t get over, they could procrastinate working with each other indefinitely. 

This is sad and is bound to cause a huge influx in questions about how long we think The Strokes will still be a band etc. For the record: I think there will DEFINITELY be a fifth album in the next 2-3 years (also their contract calls for a fifth, and that’s probably hard to get out of). Beyond that, no one knows. Bands don’t have an expiration date like milk and don’t plan ahead to disband after a certain number of years, so it’s kind of useless to make predictions beyond a year or two, as fans or as people in the band itself. 

Anonymous asked: So in your opinion(s), was Angles worth the wait?

We’ve answered a lot of questions about Angles lately and our opinions on it, such as here, here, and here.  The “mod opinions” tag is a great place to  go to find our thoughts on things :)

Anonymous asked: can you show the strokes' video on family feud?

The Strokes were never on Family Feud—the only clips of it that exist are in the Someday video, made specially for the video.

Anonymous asked: Can you write all music videos they did (not live)? I mean something like Juicebox. I downloaded some clips but I don't know did they do another than I have. Thanks, Sisko

Here are all of the official music videos (I tried to find as many as I could on Vimeo, which might give more luck to people that can’t access The Strokes VEVO page):

• Hard To Explain (YouTube)
• Someday (YouTube)
• Last Nite (Vimeo)
• 12:51 (Vimeo)
• Reptilia (Vimeo)
• The End Has No End (YouTube)
• Juicebox (Vimeo)
• Heart In A Cage (YouTube) (also HERE on Tumblr)
• You Only Live Once 1 (YouTube)
• You Only Live Once 2 (Vimeo)
• Under Cover of Darkness (Vimeo)
• Taken For A Fool (Vimeo)

Anonymous asked: can you post the picture that the cover for "first impressions of earth" was based off of? xx

This question is exactly why I made an #faq tag (more for myself than for others)…someone’s asked this at least twice and every single time I go crazy trying to find the original picture :P. Of course, the last time someone asked, this was before I made the #faq tag, so I had to go digging -.-

Check THIS post for the scientific photos that the album cover/title may or may not be based on/inspired by (the “earth” one). The actual artwork is from an artist named Lothar Quinte, who had a series of pantings that look like the cover artwork. The liner notes credit one from 1968 called “Ohne Titel,” but when you Google that, lots comes up:

This one (which is the most obviously similar, but the date on it is 1966)

This one (source here, it’s the same minus the coloring, of course, date 1967)

This one (which is totally rad but only just “similar,” and the source has expired)

In a nutshell, I’ve never found the EXACT piece of art that the cover is based on using the internet, and I don’t think it’s anywhere that’s accessible for free, but the artist is Lothar Quinte. Search something like “Ohne Titel Lothar Quinte” in Google Images for more examples of what I guess is a series that all bear similarities to the album art. 

Hope that’s somewhat helpful! For the record, the FIOE album art is one of my favorite album covers of all time, bar none. 

—Chelsea

Anonymous asked: There's a hilarious gif set I've seen floating around with Julian and Nikolai on MTV that I can't seem to find on YouTube for the life of me. Julian is talking about writing songs and he says, "Writing songs is difficult and fun and difficult.. And the fun is that it's difficult.. And the difficulty is that it's difficult." And then Julian facepalms, Nikolai says "It's okay man," and Julian reaches back and shouts, "nooooooooooo!" Any idea what this if from?

This is the gif set you’re talking about, and this has officially become an FAQ! I couldn’t find the video again on YouTube just using search terms, so I found the ask from a few months ago with the link, and HERE it is :D

—Chelsea

Anonymous asked: what is the magna logo and why is it the same as the strokes logo? julian wore the t shirt in some photos, i'm just curious what that is.

The Strokes’ logo is called the Magna logo because it was inspired by the logo for Magna cigarettes:

And yes, Julian did have a Magna shirt:

—Chelsea

Anonymous asked: Do you know wich songs from The Strokes are B-sides? Thanks (:

• New York City Cops [in the US]
• When It Started [in the UK/rest of world]
• Alone Together (Home Recording)
• Is This It (Home Recording)
• The Way It Is (Home Recording)
• Modern Girls and Old Fashioned Men (Feat. Regina Spektor)
• Clampdown (Live) [cover of The Clash]
• Hawaii
• Life Is A Gas [cover of The Ramones]
• I’ll Try Anything Once
• Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) (Feat. Eddie Vedder and Josh Homme) [cover of Marvin Gaye]
• You’re So Right
• Taken For A Fool (Live feat. Elvis Costello)

voltage-veins-deactivated201204 asked: heloo, i saw something on my dash about The Strokes having a biography? and i got really excited and didnt know what to do with myself and kinda thought how the hell didnt i know about this what kind of fan am?! D: k sorry my point is, is there one and could you give me the details? thanks so much (:

There is an unauthorized biography by Martin Roach. It’s out of print, so it’s extremely expensive (over $40 used on Amazon at the cheapest, and it goes up to as much as $270!). 

I think it would be fun to read, just because I like to laugh at unauthorized biographies of bands and things I feel I already know a decent amount about. But I think the bottom line is this— you can find pretty much EVERYTHING in that book on the internet via interviews and articles with and about the band—unauthorized biographies are based primarily in research, and these guys have access to the same sources we do. Authorized biographies, on the other hand, are written in conjunction with the band/subject, usually based on extensive new interviews with the subjects themselves and the people around them. Unauthorized biographies usually don’t have that kind of access and get their information from more public places.

—Chelsea